Due to simplicity and efficiency, Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) based compression techniques are dominant in video compression. Many popular video compression standards, such as MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and H.261, employ DCT techniques. The basic approach of a DCT based compression technique is to subdivide the image into 8×8 blocks and then individually transform, quantize, and encode each block. However, this block-based encoding technique introduces blocking artifacts between block boundaries because the DCT does not take the correlation between block boundaries into account. The blocking artifacts are typically the most noticeable picture degradation in DCT based coding systems.
Many post-processing algorithms have been proposed to remove the blocking artifacts of DCT-based compressed videos. Typically, such de-blocking algorithms need the precise location of the 8×8 grid because the de-blocking processes are applied near the grid where the blocking artifacts appear. De-blocking algorithms are designed for a fixed grid, assuming the grid location is known. However, in practice, grid positions can shift due to signal handling procedures, such as digital-analogue conversions and video signal transmission. Thus, when de-blocking algorithms are applied in real-life applications, such as TV, not only the blocking artifacts cannot be properly removed, but also other artifacts can be introduced if the algorithms' designated grid location does not match the input video's actual grid location. As such, without the precise grid location being provided, conventional post-processing algorithms are ineffective in practice.
There is, therefore, a need for a grid detection method and system to control the post-processing for de-blocking. There is also a need for such grid detecting method and apparatus to be capable of accurately detecting whether there is a grid in the input video and computing the precise location of the detected grid.